Bien-Pensant Attitudes Toward Separatism

As long as I’m reading Daniel Larison, he asks a very good question: why should anyone in America care about Scottish Independence?

The answer is certainly, “they shouldn’t,” with the possible exception of Americans with strong Scottish roots or recent immigrants from Britain, who might reasonably be expected to have strong feelings about important internal developments in the Old Country. But clearly people in our political class do have such opinions. Why?

In general, bien pensant attitudes towards separatism are favorable when the breakaway region appears to be suffering under some kind of oppression, and unfavorable when the breakaway region appears to be trying to get out of its collective obligations. So: independence for East Timor and South Sudan and Kurdistan all have been popular among the editorializing crowd, both right and left. And nobody was upset by the Czech-Slovak “velvet divorce” because the poorer Slovaks clearly favored it. On the other side of the ledger, peaceful movements for independence in Flanders and the Italian Piedmont are generally considered “bad” by these same editorialists because these are rich regions trying to break away from the poorer parts of their countries.

When the evidence is ambiguous, the reactions are ambiguous as well. Quebec, Catalonia and Scotland can all make very credible claims to having suffered historically at the hands of a central government that is to some degree foreign. I know plenty of people who are not Scottish but who kind of like the idea of Scottish independence, and that has everything to do with a kind of Scottish romance derived from 19th-century novels (and Mel Gibson). But Scottish independence is motivated in part by a desire for sovereignty over what’s left of the North Sea oil; Catalonia is wealthier than Spain generally (and Spain generally is hurting badly in the wake of the financial crisis); and Quebec has won so many Constitutional concessions to avert separatism that continued separatist sentiment strikes many as frankly ungrateful. And editorialists were far from unified in their support for Slovenian and Croatian independence. On the one hand, these regions were breaking away from a state increasingly dominated by an oppressive Serbian nationalism. On the other hand, they were identified as the oppressors in World War II, and they were still relatively well-off compared with the Serbs they sought to separate from. Support for the breakup of Yugoslavia only really hardened in the West when the Bosnian civil war got going.

As for the Post editorial: my view is that, to the extent that we want a Europe that can be a viable partner in foreign policy, we should stop opposing the development of a common European defense outside NATO; and to the extent that we don’t care whether we have a viable European partner, why should we care what they do? Either way, NATO is an increasingly anachronistic framework within which to think about European collective security, and a completely inappropriate framework for dealing with issues that don’t fit under that mandate. Scottish independence might, in some small way, make that clearer, but even that is doubtful.

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7 Responses to Bien-Pensant Attitudes Toward Separatism

What evidence is there that Quebec has suffered historically at the hands of the Canadian federal government? I am not by any means particularly hostile to Quebec independence, but I have trouble thinking what you might mean. You would have to go back to the period between Conquest and the Quebec Act to point to anything that could be said to be political oppression of the francophone majority in Quebec.

I grant that te Union of the Canadas in 1840 was intended to politically oppress the French, but it didn’t work out that way. Instead, the Union became dualist with a veto to both national groups. The Canadian federal system was created in part as a way of giving Quebec greater autonomy, while at the same time accepting English demands for one-man one-vote. From 1867 to the origin of modern separatism, Quebec had its own state and virtually every non-Quebec prime minister depended on a Quebec lieutenant who was almost a co-premier. There has been no enduring central government in Canadian history without broad support in Quebec until the current Harper government.

On the other hand, I also doubt that it can be said that Quebec has won any particular constitutional cocessions since modern separatism developed in the late 1960s. The major subsequent constituitonal reform in 1981-82 was done against the will of the Quebec government and is considered a betrayal by Quebec nationalist opinion. Mulroney’s subsequent attempts to provide for concessions were defeated.

The idea that nationalism is a response to oppression is dumb. Peoples become more nationalist when oppression lessens.

“…has everything to do with a kind of Scottish romance derived from 19th-century novels (and Mel Gibson).”

That’s the nail on the head, right there. It’s just a bad idea to support a political movement based on a bodice-ripper (or a, um…kilt-lifter). Flush 300 years of union because Mad Max descended from High Hollywood and made a film depicting Scots as other than golf-obsessed, porridge-gorged skinflints. Ridiculous. Considering that the north of England is much more like Glasgow than the Home Counties, where do secession and devolution stop? We know Cardiff is out. Can England keep Liverpool? Sheffield?

Please don’t call aggression on an independent and sovereign state a “civil war”. If one of the sides in the conflit, or one participant on that side, is an army of a foreign state, that’s not civil war, it’s aggression. And that’s happened in Bosnia.

As for Quebec I have a friend who voted for secession there. he actually said his big reason for voting for secession is that the provincial and federal governments agree on virtually nothing and so secession would mean a lot less fighting between the levels of government.